Super Scientists in Action!
This week has been a very busy time in the lab for practical investigations and the skills on show are of an excellent standard. Everyone is learning about variables and using the very helpful ‘CHIMED’ acronym to remember you change independent (CHI) and measure dependent (MED)
We started out the week with Year 4 investigating whether gases had mass. Easier said than done as we found it was rather difficult to hold onto gases! We first voted whether a full balloon or an empty one was heavier. Mrs Hills-Matthews held them in both hands and dropped them at the same time. The empty one fell more quickly and after a quick vote it was decided the empty one must be heavier.
Balloons were handed out and we weighed full and empty ones – astonishingly, the full ones were heavier by between 0.2 and 0.4g! Gases had mass! We realised the reason the full balloon fell at a different rate was because of wind resistance slowing it down.
But the question of gases and their mass continued when we looked at how heavy the gases were in different fizzy drinks. The aim was to find the fizziest.
The skills deployed by Year 4 were accurately deployed as not a splash could be made! We carefully poured out equal measures of (independent variable) Sprite, Orange and Mango fizzy drink, Coke Zero and Fanta – and then carried them carefully so as not to jolt the beakers and release any of the bubbles more than was going to happen naturally. Time was of the essence to get the beakers of fizz onto the scales while they were at their most fizzy. Masses were recorded (dependent variable) and then the (very careful!) stirring began to dislodge the gas from the liquid and make it flat. We decided on a protocol of 10 stirs then listen to see if the bubbles were still there. When the final pops and crackles had gone, we then weighed the now flat liquids to see the difference.
Each beaker had lost up to 0.5g of mass and we could finally declare a fizz champion – 4S and 4K found Sprite was the fizziest and 4C found Coke Zero was.
Then it was the turn of Year 5 to do our largest ever investigation into insulation using hot water bottles. This time we had two independent variables being investigated in the class. Each group had a certain size of hot water bottle – small, medium, large and long, which were wrapped in either bubble wrap, a foil blanket and a Caterham blazer or jumper. One was left bare in each size as a control to compare. Every 5 minutes we took the temperature of outside and under the wrapping of each bottle and noted the results. This was done efficiently with our new digital thermometer guns.
And we are delighted to say it is fantastic news for the school uniform – it successfully insulated the hot water bottles retaining the most heat at the end of both 5S and 5D’s investigations. Next week we are going to compare all the class group results to see which size bottle the best was to use and keep us warmest in the winter!
Well done to all our science investigators, great hands-on experience researching all those variables!
